vks fullfillment problems, no product,no refund,had to contact bank

[kavatester]

hate to report this but i recently placed an order with vks that went badly awry, before i ordered they assured me the product was in stock and ready to ship from u.s. location within two days....so i ordered four packages of malekula magic...after waiting over a week and a half without recieving tracking info i decided to contact them and ask what was up...they told me they had cancelled my order due to a technical problem with the website, i asked when they were going to tell me or refund my money and they said they were sorry they didnt know why i wasn't told my order was cancelled....i asked if they knew why it was cancelled and they said they couldn't tell me that it only said "order cancelled due to website malfunction" i asked when they would send refund and they said asap, a couple days later i asked when asap was and they said they didnt know but it would be "soon" so basically...i sent them money, they cancelled the order without telling me until i contacted them long after i should have recieved product and then refused to give a time frame for when i would recieve refund.....yep we got your money,no we are not sending your product,we will send a refund asap but would never commit to an actual date as to when i would either recieve a refund or they would ship product....i had to go to the bank and explain the whole thing to get them to cancel my visa payment....i figure if you are going to cancel someones order without giving reason you should refund funds at the same time but they think weeks later with no communication is just fine and i should accept asap as a reasonable time frame weeks after paying for something they have said they have no intention of shipping....most bizarre online shopping experience ever....i will not touch this vendor with a ten foot pole, i would rather pay the mark up to get the same product from a reseller and know my product will be shipped or least refunded if not shipped. i would also classify the people i spoke to as unusually rude considering the circumstances. ....good products/bad service.....all i wanted was a time frame for when they would ship the product or give a refund...they had no intention of doing either as far as i can tell unless they were going to refund me weeks after cancelling my order for no reason they can explain...

 

[kavatester]

was funny listening to the bank of america people try to say "vanuatu" though...

 

[TheKavaSociety]

Sorry that you had such a bad experience with these guys! I am actually surprised that they claim to have a "US location", I thought they only ship from Port Vila or refer people to their local distributors (JPT in NZ, GKE in the UK, etc.). Do you know who their distributor in the US is?

I used to think they were rather legit (as the products they ship to at least one overseas distributor passed Garry's tests for nobility, etc) and committed to good quality kava, but then I got a bit disappointed when I saw that they were selling what appeared to be K@ at their shop in Port Vila.. This obviously doesn't necessarily mean that they sell crappy kava or rip people off, but I just hoped that Vanuatu-based kava vendors wouldn't want to be associated with the legal high scene.

 

[Deleted User01]

@kavatester, bummer man. Shit happens and orders get lost and cancelled and that's normal. But it's crying shame you had to go though hell to get your money back. I hope they are reading this because what they did is very, very bad for their business. They just got punked for bad behavior.

 

[Steve Mariotti]

We should tag this post for vendor alert.

 

[kavatester]

so far as i know they are legit and the kava is really good in my experience but this was a really weird black hole of "cancelled order" "no refund sent yet but soon" for a long time and nobody could tell me why it happened other than "website problems" or why they couldn't just refile the order? they wanted me to wait an unknown amount of time for them to refund my order and then place the same order again and then they would be able to ship?...if this process took days maybe but weeks is not o.k. for me, it shouldn't be that hard to order and yes they claim the product is already in U.S. and does not need to clear customs etc for example right now they have a sale on "pentacost pride" they say because they have shipped "too much" to their U.S. fulfillment...i don't think they are problem sellers or there was any intention to rip someone off, i think they are just really inept at e-commerce currently and also probably "soon" and "asap" are of a slightly different meaning on the islands in general and especially right now things are still in a little chaos there maybe?i might give them another chance someday but probably not with how responsive other sellers have been to me....it was upsetting but has led to me trying some new kava sellers that i think i will be more pleased with in the long run anyway....i would order from vks again if i was sure that nothing like this would ever happen twice but they didn't seem to think it was that big a deal so i don't know if they will make whatever changes are needed or not....

 

[Bradley666]

Man that sucks! sorry you had to go through that! I would have been pissed!!!
After reading your post I would never even consider ordering a thing from them, if there going to do buisness like this why not remove them from the vendors list? If I sent a payment of 30+ to a vendor, and they cancelled the order without letting me know, 2 weeks after I assumed it should have been deliverd, then they tell you they wont give you your money back, and there not sure when they would send products...I would freak out on them! How can a buisness like this even stay afloat after treating people soo bad...rediculas

 

[Steve Mariotti]

Should make this a Kava Vendor Alert

 

[The Kap'n]

Should make this a Kava Vendor Alert

Steve, this looks like an isolated incident. If more members come here saying the same things as kavatester we'll issue a big ole' warning to all the members.

 

[kastom_lif]

Sorry to necropost here, but four days ago I placed an order with Noble Kava of Asheville, NC. They do fulfillment for VKS and I went with Noble Kava because their prices beat going direct to VKS. Plus, I had purchased a few kilos pre-cyclone-Pam and had a good experience, and Andrew Procyk seems like a cool person on these forums, well, back when he was posting at least.

Unfortunately, 4 days later and all I have is a paypal receipt. I called the nakamal in Asheville using available contact info and the people there were friendly but didn't know about "back of house" operations. Hopefully they'll get back to me with a tracking number.

I was so stoked to see someone selling Tanna Marang Marang (even though the 2002 Vanuatu kava act schedules it as "medicinal" rather than noble), especially AFTER Pam. Did I mistakenly send and order off into a black hole? Does Noble Kava of Asheville still do fulfillment for VKS?